On Celebrating your Ambition. On Focusing on the right things. On the Courage of Cutting.
We are already ready. So many of us wait around, waiting for the boss or the spouse to give us permission to go and pursue our dream. It is permission that isn’t coming. The boss has her own thing. The spouse doesn’t get your dream. The support may not be coming — that doesn’t mean you don’t pursue your thing. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to touch those dreams every day, no matter how little. What if you went after it anyway? What if you didn’t ask, yet you went? Gone! What would happen? Better, what’s the worst that could happen? The worst that can happen is rarely as bad as we think. We tend to catastrophize. There’s no need to ever catastrophize. No. Plan, yes. Calculate risks, yes. Always be thinking of the worst outcome? No. You have more potential than you realize. The boss, the spouse, those closest to you may not see it. A pro coach can see it. An executive coach can point it out. But those closest to you may not. This is why it is up to us. It falls on us to follow our dreams and our ambitions with or without support.
What if you celebrated your ambitions?
What if you celebrated your ambitions instead of tamp them down, playing small? What if you celebrated all the personal and professional things you did last year that you are most proud of? What if you told a better story of triumph and transformation about yourself, compelling others to act? What if you took the time to celebrate and integrate your life’s wins vs. just immediately moving onto the next one? You likely do some cool things, and make some cool things for others. Celebrate that! Tell those stories more often. Feel your wins. Celebrate yourself. Take others out and celebrate both you and them. Celebrate your friendships because they are worth celebrating regularly. You should celebrate your friendships like you celebrate your customers because great ones can be rare.
Celebrating your ambitions is celebrating big things, big ideas, big executions, creativity & innovation. Yet it can feel like zero appreciation to pursue that which is hard, that which most people won’t. People would look at you like, “Why are you doin’ that!? I wouldn’t do that! Who do you think you are!? “ Yes, well, you’re not me. We are on different paths. I celebrate mine. You got yours.
In fact, innovation and its evolutions can take awhile to catch on and engage people. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Doesn’t mean some people won’t get what you’re up to. Doesn’t mean you are all alone, though it can feel like that every now and then. Similar to writing or creating anything. You gotta root for you. Cheer for yourself. Cheer on your own efforts. It isn’t cheesy. If you nail something hard, celebrate that. If you beat your previous best, celebrate that. If you solve a difficult problem for others through continuous trial & error, definitely celebrate that with them! Celebrate solving hard things. Then, tackle the next hard thing. And then the next.
One of the reasons to celebrate this is because most people are not willing to tackle the hard things first. They’re already lost in the inbox and social media, checking in. This is a daily lost opportunity to build your legacy on things that matter most. Not meetings. Not email. Not a two second social post just flipped through and not seen. No. Long lasting stuff that matters. It’s flipping the script to your day. The hardest things should get the best hours of your day, not the other way around.
Meetings email, social can be pushed to the afternoon when you’re not on attack mode on the hard things that matter the most, the things that will move the needle for your creativity and your business and your customers. Those who say they don’t have time are really saying they don’t have the intention to do the hard things that will last. Everybody’s got the same time. Not everybody’s got the same priorities and intentions for that same time. And few are willing to cut, cut, cut away at the things that simply do not matter today. In a world filled with unessential activities, it’s no wonder so many of us are adrift in distraction, forever echoing that we don’t have the time. Yet we do — We do! — if we’re ambitious, aggressive and assertive with our time, and willing to cut-out that which does not matter today.
Take back your day.
The great news is if you’re willing to do this, to take back your day and your time, to say no more often, to focus hard on what matters most here and block out the distractions, you win back your freedom and your drive. That’s really what most professionals want: freedom to work on the things that matter, focus, energy and drive to get it done. And to be proud of the achievement. Then, focus on the next big idea after that one. We want our work to matter to people, to us. We want a lasting legacy, to give people stories to tell about us and about our work and our work ethic and the deep meaning we inject into those qualities. You won’t be overwhelmed if you’re focused on the right thing, only doing that one thing, and not worrying about the rest of your day. If it is planned properly through intention and to the brass tacks of what really matters most, overwhelm is gone. You won’t miss it. You also won’t miss distraction, either. And I guarantee you that you won’t miss that meeting you cut out.
The Legacy of Creativity, Collaboration and Contribution.
See, the key is to have the assertiveness to cut-out the non-essential things that eat up your time each day that take away from your legacy work. The work that distracts you on a daily basis isn’t your legacy work. No. It is the same B.S. distractions that eat up everybody else’s day, not at all moving the needle on the things that matter most. Nobody desires a legacy of distraction. Everybody desires a legacy of Creativity, contribution, collaboration and a body of work you can point to that matters most, that makes the biggest difference for people. We don’t need another course on time management, telling us the same tired things we heard 20 years ago. We need to be assertive with our time as scarce and treat it as the precious resource that it is. Esp our best, most energetic hours of the day.
If we zoom up, we see that everything starts and engages with intention. What do we intend for this day? How do we want it to be? How do we want it to feel? How will we treat people today? Who needs us the most? Who needs our coaching today? What absolutely must be done today? What is one thing we can be excited for today? Who can I help or surprise today that they wouldn’t expect?
Yet, instead, what most of us do is the opposite: fall into the day with zero expectation nor intention about how it ought to be for us. Zero! It’s no wonder we are awash in distraction! With no intention, all that’s left is distraction. Another meeting. The inbox. The socials. Arguing politics. Fighting. Another meeting. None of which matters for your body of work. And that is 80% of most peoples’ day!
ON the Courage to Cut.
Instead, how should this day be? If it could be exactly as I like it to be, what would that look and feel like? What projects would be top priority? What would matter most to me? What would I inject meaning into? Would could I create for others to add to build my body of work? What will be durable and last long for my audience? What will be as relevant in twelve or eighteen months from now as it is today?
The disciplined day begins with performance prompts, questions about who we will choose to be, where we are going, what we will and what we /won’t/ do with our time, what we choose to work on, and where we see ourselves going, and what matters the most right now. It is fueled by the assertive, even aggressive, discipline to say no more often because most things are unessential to our main goals and projects. Give yourself the courage and the freedom to cut.
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